Columbus-area high school students will join celebrated poets from around the country in a live poetry reading at 7 pm Saturday, May 3, at the Davidson Theatre.

Schooled on Poetry, a collaboration between CAPA, Thurber House, and poet-educator Peter Kahn, with additional support provided by The Ohio State University, The Poetry Foundation, and The Columbus Foundation, is the culminating celebration of a year-long Spoken Word poetry project at Lincoln Park Elementary School, AIMS Middle School, Walnut Ridge High School and the Arts and College Preparatory Academy. At the culminating event on May 3, there will be intra-school group pieces and individual original poems by slam champs from each school.

Students will be joined by Columbus poets Hanif Abdurraqib, Steven Waddell, and Cynthia Amoah, as well as Nashville-based poet-rapper Chris Byrd, and New York Times Bestselling author Kwame Alexander. 

“There’s so much hidden talent in Columbus area schools. Schooled on Poetry aims to help showcase the power of the student voice and help build an intergenerational poetry community,” Kahn said.

Tickets are $10 for adults and free for students and educators. Tickets are available may be purchased at the CAPA Ticket Center at the Ohio Theatre (39 E. State St.), online at www.capa.com, or by phone at (614) 469-0939.

To learn more about Peter Kahn and the intra-school project, visit www.poet-educatorpeterkahn.org.

Kwame Alexander is a poet, educator, Emmy-winning producer and #1 New York Times bestselling author of 42 books, including the new release How Sweet The Sound, Black Star, the second installment of his Door of No Return trilogy, This Is The Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets, Why Fathers Cry at Night, An American Story, the Coretta Scott King Award-winning book illustrated by Dare Coulter, The Door of No Return, Becoming Muhammad Ali (co-authored with James Patterson), Rebound, which was shortlisted for the prestigious UK Carnegie Medal, and The Undefeated, the National Book Award nominee, Newbery Honor, and Caldecott Medal-winning picture book illustrated by Kadir Nelson.

Alexander is also the Emmy-winning executive producer, showrunner, and writer of The Crossover TV series, based on his Newbery-Medal winning novel of the same name, which premiered on Disney+ in April 2023. A regular contributor to NPR’s “Morning Edition,” Kwame is the creator and host of the “Why Fathers Cry” podcast, premiering September 2023, featuring conversations about love and parenting and loss, with fathers and sons. Most recently he was appointed the Rudell Artistic Director of Literary Arts and Writer-in-Residence at the Chautauqua Institution.

Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus. His poetry has been published in Muzzle, Vinyl, PEN American, and various other journals. His essays and music criticism have been published in The FADER, Pitchfork, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. His first full length poetry collection, The Crown Ain’t Worth Much, was released in June 2016 by Button Poetry and was named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize and nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. His first collection of essays, “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us,” was released in winter 2017 by Two Dollar Radio and was named a book of the year by Buzzfeed, Esquire, NPR, Oprah Magazine, Paste, CBC, The Los Angeles Review, Pitchfork, and The Chicago Tribune, among others. He released Go Ahead In The Rain: Notes To A Tribe Called Quest with University of Texas press in February 2019 and the book became a New York Times Bestseller, was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, and was longlisted for the National Book Award. His second collection of poems, “A Fortune For Your Disaster,” was released in 2019 by Tin House, and won the 2020 Lenore Marshall Prize. In 2021, he released the book “A Little Devil In America” with Random House, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the The PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. The book won the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and the Gordon Burn Prize. Hanif is a graduate of Beechcroft High School.

Cynthia Amoah is a Ghanaian-American poet, national speaker, and teaching artist based in Columbus. She received her MFA from The New School where she was cited for Excellence in Poetry and has been featured on three TEDx stages, The Lincoln Theatre, as well as the United Nations Information Center in Accra, among many. Her writing and performances often concern the foraging questions that have to do with identity and belonging, with displacement, migration and uprootedness. Cynthia’s chapbook Handrails was published by Akashic Books in Fall 2021. Amoah facilitates workshops in poetry, positive-thinking, confidence-building, and using our voice as an instrument for strength and social change. www.cynthiaamoah.com

Steven Byron Waddell is an educator and award winning poet originally from Chicago. He began writing poetry as a way to cope with his depression and refined his skills under the mentorship of poets such as Peter Kahn, Avery R Young, and Daniel Borzutzky. Waddell has been featured in the Academy of American Poets for his work Then/Now which describes the legacy of policing and slavery in America. Steven has worked with students at the high school and collegiate level through his work supporting Schooled On Poetry as well as helping establish the Columbus State Community College Annual Poetry Slam. He is currently working on his first collection of poems entitled Do It Myself, which is a poetic autobiography.

Chris Montel Byrd is an Army veteran who served in Afghanistan. He is an artist, producer, entrepreneur, fitness connoisseur, poet and rapper. He grew up on the west side of Chicago and also lived on the south side for many years. Most of his childhood, Chris lived in homeless shelters, attics, trains, and airports. Those life situations are the reason he is the man he is today and helps him strive to be the best person he can be. They taught him to always appreciate today, work towards tomorrow, never forget his past. This is his first time in Ohio.